Reading about Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the Dust Bowl in the Sunday paper brings to mind that the Denver metro area was not immune to problems from this. In 1934 or 1935, when I was a little kid, the Brookridge dairy on South Broadway had a huge metal barn about 2,000 feet southeast of our home. I remember standing in the yard one day and watching a dust storm roll in from the east and things got darker and darker until you couldn’t even see the building, and the window sills and everything in our house were covered with dust.

All this wasn’t too long after the 1933 floods in which Cherry Creek did a lot of damage in Denver, and the rampaging Big Dry Creek, which ran right behind our property, took out the bridge on South Broadway, and it took quite a while to get that repaired.

So those were the days — which we hope never repeat.

Loren Jacobson, Littleton

This letter was published in the Nov. 25 edition.

I reminisced while reading your article on the Dust Bowl. I lived through the 1930s in central Nebraska, blowing dust, grasshoppers, no crops everywhere, etc. Sad to say, both articles took a few facts and politicized them (e.g. wrongly blaming global warming/overly crediting government help). It was very obvious neither author really has any depth to what they were talking about.

John Gishpert, Denver

This letter was published in the Nov. 25 edition.

In March 2004, Science magazine published an extensive article about the cause of the Dust Bowl, the abstract of which reads as follows:

“During the 1930s, the United States experienced one of the most devastating droughts of the past century. The drought affected almost two-thirds of the country and parts of Mexico and Canada and was infamous for the numerous dust storms that occurred in the southern Great Plains. In this study, we present model results that indicate that the drought was caused by anomalous tropical sea surface temperatures during that decade and that interactions between the atmosphere and the land surface increased its severity. We also contrast the 1930s drought with other North American droughts of the 20th century.”

We know more now than we did then about how these things happen.

Time to update the narrative.

Donna Brosemer, Denver

This letter was published in the Nov. 25 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow DPLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

Ah, yes, another anti-gummint agitator.
Mr. Gishpert, government agencies planted millions of trees to create windbreaks. Government agencies taught farmers new methods of planing, of plowing, of working with contours rather than against them.
But, no, gummint is always the enemy.

http://www.facebook.com/patrick.l.tolle Patrick L. Tolle

And now we’re tearing out those shelter belts to make room for center pivots and to create another acre or two of crop ground, destroying both the windbreak value and valuable wildlife habitat.Ironically it’s as likely that government programs (crop subsidies) are as responsible for this destruction as government programs were for their creation.

thor

At least you didn’t tackle climate change as well. Mr. Gishpert is correct on one thing, we will learn nothing about what causes climate change from the Dust Bowl. But being correct about government help doesn’t give you license to be boring by using the misspelling “gummint.”

Anonymous

The surface human causes of the Dust Bowl are well enough known without resorting to climate change.
Long-term droughts are frequent in this part of the USA.
Something we still haven’t learned with our blue-grassed suburbs and golf courses, our ski resorts foolish enough to think natural cycles don’t matter, our desire to build subdivisions in parched, too-dense forests.
Life will be interesting if the current drought persists through 2013, 2014 …

thor

No doubt humans are their own worst enemies. Your list is more legitimate than the stretch being made by those promoting human-caused global warming. Let’s just stay with facts, not conjecture.

Anonymous

Actually, Mr. Gishpert appears not to be correct in his rebuke of the authors of the referenced pieces “blaming” global warming as cause of the dust bowl. Perhaps I missed it, but my read of the articles found no such blame.

The consensus cause of the drought leading to the dust bowl are the La Nina conditions in the Pacific and elevated SSTs on the Atlantic coast, resulting in a change in the jet. But, without the dust loading caused by uncontrolled plowing of native grasses, the drought should not have migrated so far north. And, without the warming (partly anthropogenic and partly solar sourced) leading up to 1940, the drought conditions may have not persisted or have been so extreme. The dust bowl was human caused.

As for “learn[ing] nothing about what causes climate change…”, “we” actually learn from every climate anomaly. The dust bowl is no different.

Anonymous

What has really brought back farming in former dust-belt regions is irrigation by draining the Oglalla Aquifer.
Unfortunately that huge underground water aquifer is being drained at a rate vastly exceeding natural replenishment rates.
When the aquifer runs dry, the real challenges will start all over again.

Old Enough

And, we’ll end up using the rest of the water for fracking.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jean-Mcmahon/1044297144 Jean Mcmahon

The point of the series is that humans are perfectly capable of causing severe,catestrophic climate change..so Watch out we have learned nothing from the past

Anonymous

You are confusing human-caused climate change with human-caused ecological damage as a result of changes in climate.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that human activity caused the drought that led to the Dust Bowl era. Long droughts are a common occurrence in this part of the country something we routinely forget.
Rather, human farming practices of the time exacerbated natural effects of drought, and led to the Dust Bowl disaster.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

Recent Comments

peterpi: I think I have this correct: Voters in Jefferson County elected school board members that the superintendent...

peterpi: Sounds good to me. For future employees. I believe police and fire dept. brass have also been known to get...